Genetically modified food...

Did you know that the PLU code on your fruit and veggies can tell you how they were grown? It's really very simple...

Click on the following link for the full story  http://www.plantea.com/genetically-modified-foods.htm


...and I also copied it below...

Talking Fruit How to de-code the information on those little stickers By Marion Owen, Fearless Weeder for PlanTea, Inc. and Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul While unpacking groceries, you pull out the bag of apples and decide to eat one then and there. You take it over to the sink, wash it off and -- with some effort -- peel off the little sticker. Pausing to look more closely at the sticker you wonder, "What do those numbers mean?" As much as we may dislike them, the stickers or labels attached to fruit do more than speed up the scanning process at the checkout stand. The PLU code, or price lookup number printed on the sticker, tells you how the fruit was grown. As reported by Maria Gallagher, in the June 26, 2002 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, by reading the PLU code, you can tell if the fruit was genetically modified, organically grown or produced with chemical fertilizers, fungicides, or herbicides. Here's how it works: For conventionally grown fruit, (grown with chemicals inputs), the PLU code on the sticker consists of four numbers. Organically grown fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 9. Genetically engineered (GM) fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 8. For example, A conventionally grown banana would be: 4011 An organic banana would be: 94011 A genetically engineered (GE or GMO) banana would be: 84011 The numeric system was developed by the Produce Electronic Identification Board, an affiliate of the Produce Marketing Association, a Newark, Delaware-based trade group for the produce industry. As of October 2001, the board had assigned more than 1,200 PLUs for individual produce items. Incidentally, the adhesive used to attach the stickers is considered food-grade, but the stickers themselves aren't edible. Do you REALLY know what's in your dinner? Today, 7 out of every 10 items on grocery stores shelves contain ingredients that have been genetically modified. In other words, scientists are using new technology to transfer the genes of one species to another, and these altered foods are in the market stream. And yet many scientists have concerns about the safety -- to people, wildlife and the environment -- of this process. That's why consumers in Asia and Europe are demanding that their food be free of genetically modified ingredients.